Heaven is Wherever You Are
by SeriouslySiriusPadfoot
Summary: Post CA:TWS, AU CA:CW. Bucky snapped out of programming and is healing while tearing Hydra apart with knives and bullets, he has help. Sam and Steve look for him. One day they find him and everything changes for the Avengers and the two time worn men. Everything changes and everything stays the same. I suck at summaries just read it.
Quick Author's note and Disclaimer: This is Very OOC to some of you, but I'm going off of TWS, ignoring Civil War cause I haven't watched it yet. BUT what I saw broke me. So we can all pretend it never happened and this happened instead.

I do not own or work with Disney or Marvel. The following is pure fiction and I am not receiving any form of remuneration for writing this. I only get to heal the heart that Marvel and Disney expertly tear apart even though I love it.

The only thing I hope to get out of this is making a few of my fellow MCU fans smile so we can pretend that Civil War never happened, I am scarred to death to watch it actually.

Enjoy.

* * *

The room was dark as he nudged open his door. His body protested as bruises twinged and bullet wounds stung. His right arm was covered in gashes and cuts from bullet grazes and swipes of some impressively placed knife. With a silent grimace he quietly shut the door and set his bag down before rolling his shoulders and reaching for the opened bottle of Jack Daniels and pour himself a drink after rinsing out a glass. He did not start when he saw there was a significant amount missing as he picked up the bottle and carried it over with him to fetch his tumbler. There was a good four fingers gone and one of the crystal etched tumblers was missing. He did not need to look at the kitchen counter to know that his ashtray was gone and that there was someone sitting in the couch farthest from the window in his living room. No, he only got himself drink, counted the number of knives on his person, and the small gun strapped to his ankle and the other much more effective one hidden by his jacket.

He had caught the scent of cigarette smoke as soon as he had neared his hallway.

It was stronger in his apartment, familiar and he craved a drag. He couldn't remember if he'd ever smoked or if he ever shared a cigarette with someone just that he had always carried a lighter. First for women who would flirt and ask him for a light and then for men in a forest. Those memories where fuzzy and warm.

Calmly he walked over to the living room and sat in an armchair. The dim light of the lamb he had on a side table flickered on and his heart stopped for a fraction of a second as his mind formulated plans. This person was supposed to be dead but here they were sitting with their legs crossed and their feet on his couch. Smoking a cigarette with a tumbler of his booze to their left on the coffee table. A book was open, The Hobbit, he recognized the dog-eared pages and the hardback cover that peeked out at him from there it lay on the table. Neither spoke for a long time, this person only took a drag from there cigarette and occasionally tapped the ash off in the glass ashtray.

"I came here alone, y'know." The person said, a lilting accent that held too many notes to pin down properly carried with the honesty in those words.

He heard traces of different northern European languages and distinct British tone that held everything together. The voice was slightly rough but quiet and somehow soft, like a smoker who had damaged their vocal chords beyond full recuperation or someone who wasn't used to speaking often. There was a bag on the ground by their feet and he carefully reached for the knife tucked into his sleeve as they reached inside.

To his surprise they pulled out a clear bag with a zipper, full of medical supplies. They got up slowly and placed the bag in his lap before perching on the armrest of his seat. He glanced up them as they carefully extracted his untouched glass from his hand and placed it on the coffee table without any effort and full of smooth grace.

He was nudged forward gently and his jacket was removed, he noted that his visitor was careful not to dislodge any of his hidden weapons and then his shirt came off. He said nothing, only watched and registered the slow and deliberately clear movements the visitor made and how they placed his clothes and weapons within his reach.

There was a sense of understanding in the visitor's eyes as they made sure to test each disinfectant, the needle for stitches that were sanitized a second time with tested disinfectant, the plasters on themselves and waited for him to nod or hold out his arm so they could continue to patch him up. When his visitor was done and packing away the medical supplies, he decided to speak up.

"You died."

"Four times," the globe jumping accent replied. "With Valerie, with them, on the op and when I saw what they did."

"The tank." His voice was monotone but he remembered the cold water splashing his face as thin pale hands scrabbled for purchases, begging to be let go so their owner could breathe. He remembered his impromptu medic but there was no name, no warm fuzzy and sometimes panicky memories that matched the profile of his time with Steve.

"That would be the forth." They said and took a seat in the exact same spot, he noticed how they hesitated to find it and had only sat there again for his benefit.

"Why did that happen?" Barnes felt his brows scrunch together as he tried to remember why he had been used to dunk the person before him in a hole filled with slush, ice and burning cold water.

The person across smiled, "I found a hole, loop-holes in orders and exploited them. I used everything they had against them, the tank happened because I was impulsive."

"You ran." He said, flickers of dingy halls and downed guards, pain shooting through every limb and then fresh air. Living like animals for two months of pure bliss and panic before it went black. The memory was so badly damaged that he only had tiny glimpses of what had happened. He had told someone to run and held them back, buying time. He could hear his own fear riddled voice scream with bloodcurdling urgency.

"Sargent?" the voice called and he looked up and it was like seeing his late night visitor for the first time. He knew they had called him that and not by his name. Just to make him comfortable. He could tell by the way his unexpected medic held their breath and tried to keep dark blue eyes from searching. He remember a skinny and short frame pilling extra leaves on his side of their nest to make him comfy, they'd said. Because of his arm.

"Ellie." He breathed out, a hoarse whisper. The woman before him smiled broadly, her plump cherry red lips stretched into a grin that seemed to light up the room as tears welled in her eyes and the dim light made them shine every brighter. Her deep blue eyes scanned his face and he noticed her hands barely twitch, she wanted to move but to do what he didn't know. She had already healed him. "How?"

"I was very good at sneaking around since I could walk." She said as she lit up another cigarette and tossed the pack to him with the lighter snugly placed in the box. "I learned how they put up protocols and placed a few myself and tied them to a constant sensory stimulus. The only constant was blood."

"Fitting, for a gal like you." He said as he pulled out a cigarette, lit it and took a drag. He was surprised he didn't choke on the smoke, his body remembered how to do this. "When did you-"

"Run away?" She asked and he nodded, "A few days before Manhattan was attacked by the Chitauri. I overheard that SHIELD had found Captain Rogers and I snapped, I remembered you, and I played along until I was assigned my op. Soon as I was out of sight, I triggered an EMP and walked the other way."

"That easy?" Barnes said as he picked up his glass and drank the liquor, now trusting the other person in the apartment enough to relax.

The woman laughed a little, a touch too gravely but airy giggle that made his chest tighten. "I had deep set triggers to force myself to walk away, planned that for nearly half a century and I almost failed."

Her tone changed as she took a drink of whiskey, "I went underground for months, adjusting and trying to heal, left you signs that only you would recognize and would keep secret because you only knew it was important and even if dead I was the only other person you could report them to."

"You set overrides?" He asked, schooling his feature to hide the sense of betrayal.

"Yes, I did. Overrides that would trigger slowly and subconsciously once you broke out of their grasp." She said calmly, making sure he heard her perfectly. "One only I can set and were set with out any pain. I set them so I could go back for you and drag you out of there without tranquilizers."

The look on his face said the words he couldn't speak.

"It took me a while to get stable enough to get you, to ignore their overrides and protocols," She took a deep breath to settle herself and kept her hands from shaking. "I couldn't find you, Barnes."

"Why didn't you come for me after DC?" He asked, the coldness and hurt in his voice surprised him and made the pain worse, but the way her face twitched made him feel better and worse at once.

"Would you have let me near you on the river bank?" She asked, her eyes seemed darker somehow. "I was hiding in a tree ten feet away from you when you pulled the Captain out. I had climbed halfway down, about to jump in after the both of you. You didn't notice me, if I had shown myself we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"I would have thought you were there to bring me back." He said with a small amount of guilt and anxiety. The woman simply nodded from behind her whiskey.

He looked at her and noticed the subtle changes from the girl who had been a the assets shadow where he had been a ghost all those years ago. She was much paler, her features much sharper and her lips stuck out a tiny bit more than they used to, there was a faint smell of blood around her and his arm had registered an abnormally low body temperature when she had brushed against it as she patched him up. "What happened?"

"I was like this before they got me, they just let it develop and grow." Her discomfort was palpable and he made to tell her to forget it.

He didn't need to know, there had always been something strange about the girl. It only became obvious when that op went horribly wrong and he had carried her nearly lifeless body back to base. "I'm infected with something horrible, but my body adapts to things and it's been locked inside it. I can't infect anyone else, but the adaptions... they changed things."

"Like the serum?" He asked, on a whim and she looked down with a small smile on her velvet red lips.

"Something like that." She said, "just more volatile and complications are different."

"How did you find me?" He said as he got up and went to sit next to her, she leaned against his left arm and he pulled her closer, his forearm brushed against something and a bittersweet smile curled his lips.

"Followed the path of destruction, this was my apartment for a while. I carved a flower into the building wall near some graffiti." She said as accepted the ashtray from him and stubbed out the cigarette bud, "No one suspects Helsinki. Except me, and one other person."

"One other person?" he said, slipping into Russian on accident.

"I trust him, never touched Hyrda, he's a good kid and only wants to help." She answered in Finnish both to ease his embarrassment and keep the the conversation secret from prying ears. She pulled out a smartphone from her pocket. She unlocked the screen and it changed to a picture of her and kid, no older than seventeen, both where smiling and he had her smile and eyes only lighter framed by messy black hair. "He likes to go by TJ, Tomas James."

"Is he-"

"No, I found him, distant cousin but my kid in every way that counts." She said as she went to answer a text and she let Bucky read over her shoulder with no concern. "An american military division was using mutants as weapons and I found him wandering in the aftermath of a break out."

Kiddo: Bring me food?  
Eleanor: We'll see, homework done?  
Kiddo: Um, almost? Home made or are you picking up something wrapped in foil?

He had read quick enough to catch the conversation as Kennett typed in 'foil' and pressed send before locking her phone. Bucky frowned when he realized that he was the food in the coded conversation. He glanced at her with a pout, amused but still affronted.

"Would you rather be a teddy bear?" She asked and patted his chest before getting up and signing with her hand. It felt warm and familiar, something had happened before they lost all control.

They had to leave, its what the sign had meant, it was a part of a small set of signals they'd come up with on the few ops they had to tackle together. He had always been the face while she picked off people from shadows, pulling them into doorways or out of sight. All he knew about those ops was that they had been quick, more often than not covered in blood and one had gone extremely wrong.

Bucky approached her and grabbed her waist softly as he pushed her against a wall near a window, kissing her and smearing her cherry red lipstick, he pulled the blind's closed. As soon as the blinds closed he stepped out of her personal space and gathered the few things he cared about into a backpack along with his clothes. She didn't laugh or make a comment about the particular diversion tactic. If anyone had been watching, they would just see two people making time. It wasn't the first time they'd used this tactic as an excuse to close windows when they were being watched.

She asked where his weapons cache was and emptied it for him, humming appreciatively at a few pieces before following him to his closet and pushing the rucksack of weapons into the air vent he had opened for her. She went in first and with one last look at what had been his safe haven the past few weeks he followed after.

The trip through the vents brought back numbed and seemingly harmless memories, the quake of his limbs in trenches, the back of Steve's head as they escaped the hydra base where everything had started, the mad dash through the halls with Eleanor before they broke him, the many times he's been in vent systems. He swallowed to help pace his breathing as he kept crawling after her.

He wills himself to take a deep breath when they crawl out of the buildings innards and to a back entrance. The cold wind and the smell of car exhaust mixed with food in the surrounding shops makes it the most comforting breath of air he's had since seeing Steve was still breathing when he got them to the riverbank.

...linebreak...

He sits before a makeshift table, a pair of wooden produce crates, inn an ancient wooden chair. They're in a rundown shack somewhere in Lithuania and there is a ruined Hydra base a couple miles away but no sign of Bucky other than the signature of what they taught him smeared on the walls in bright red to put his name to the picture of rigor mortis contorted corpses. Sam is asleep on a bedroll in the corner, its more like a tiny reinforced tent than a your standard military bedroll and Steve has Tony to thank for them. He was stunned that Stark wanted to help, where he could while holding the fort and preparing for when they came back with Bucky.

They all knew how Howard and Maria had died, Steve had seen Stark reading the file the morning before he left. Sam and Steve had chosen to ship off from the newly christened Avenger's tower, and had had the equivalent of goodie bags shoved at them or mysteriously left at their bedroom doors. Natasha had gone all out and handed him a new uniform, the fabric was strange. She merely said it was from a friend she trusted and wanted to help.

He remembered that morning well, it was the last morning they had with the team that had become a sort of misfit family over the short few months they had spent together. Stark was reading the file as he held a coffee cup in a relaxing grip, a file Steve had kept hidden in his apartment for one reason. It listed the Asset's missions, right in the middle or the thick file was the assassination of Howard Stark. _With details._

Steve turned to were Natasha was ripping french toast into small bites with her fingertips and popping the resulting fragments into her mouth, she was still in pijamas and her hair was mussed from sleep. He could see pillow creases on her cheek. She shook her head minutely and flicker her eyes to Clint. The archer only held Steve's searching eyes. Completely immune to the Captain's reproachful glare with serenity that was beyond Steve as he took another bite of his grilled cheese and chewed almost bored. Panic had risen in his chest and then Tony spoke.

"Kids, shut up." He said and took a swig of coffee. "No, Steve you can not add more sugar to your cereal. You'll get a stomach ache at school and I don't want a call from the nurse to bring you home."

Tony wasn't even looking at them but he knew that Steve was reaching for the sugar bowl. Once they had convinced him that he didn't have to ration anything he had let that starved sweet tooth of his reek havoc on various fruits, all kind of sugars, deserts and candies. On top of everything he ate the most blindingly colorful and sickeningly sweet breakfast cereal he could find. Almost every morning except Syrup Saturdays when the whole team pilled around the communal floor's kitchen island and ate all kinds syrup drenched and buttery breakfast foods. One of them would always fill a small bottle with a different flavored syrup and label it 'Super Soldier Syrup'. Steve's smile at the stupid joke never failed to appear and they would all deny secretly holding their breath and waiting for the approving hum and nod from the national icon. Between the amount of pancaked and waffles he ate, the ever shrinking level of syrup, they all began to wonder if the serum protected him against worms or if he burned sugar like they did calories.

That morning Tony set down his coffee cup and looked at Steve, assessing him. The snap of the file against the marble counter top made Steve look at it and Tony walked out of the common kitchen and into the elevator with out a word. The cereal in Steve's bowl suddenly looked as repulsive as soupy remains with maggots for rainbow colored puffed rice flakes. Bitter, acrid, and tasting of ash. Natasha doesn't look, talk or make an attempt to touch him. Her freely offered comfort and warmth comes off in waves and sinks into his clenching gut. Clint's rude crunching of his grilled cheese is like a thumb wiping away the tears still caught in his eyelashes. No one speaks and when Clint gets up to put the file in a vent so that he can destroy it later. It feels like one of the warmest hugs he's ever shared, almost as warm as Bucky's when they where finally alone after bringing back the 107th.

The tears that never fell that morning slid silently down his cheeks when they're on the roof top about to get into a Quinjet and Tony comes back a noon carrying three rolls of fabric and metal plates. Stark sets them with the rest of their gear and the panic that's been eating at Steve unwinds and he feels like he can breathe for the first time since breakfast. It leaves him dizzy like the asthma attacks from before, when Bucky would hold his skinny back to his chest to keep his airways open.

"You kids'll catch a cold. Mom's away and I suck at wiping noses." Tony says and pulls Steve into a tight and rough hug for the first time since they met.

Steve can feel him shaking. His voice is rough and cracked with fear and possibly worry but Steve doesn't let himself hope. Stark knew they were going to trapeze from Hydra base to Hydra base in the middle of nowhere to bring back a man that might not even recognize Steve, and he was terrified. Natasha is suddenly on guard while Clint pretends to be quietly saying goodbye to Sam even if they had already done that before Tony walked onto the helipad.

Steve's pretty sure that that Natasha was only one outside himself who heard Tony's shaking tear thickened voice when he whispers into his ear. "Don't get shot, bring him back. Please be safe."

The last plea is raw with emotion and it warms Steve down to his toes as the knot in his throat grows, cuts at the soft tissue in his neck, and spikes pierce his vocal chords. Tony claps him on the back with a firm friendly hand and when he pulls away. The only tells are his too bright eyes and the slightly parlor to his tan skin. The shaking hands are plunged into denim pockets before anyone can see. Otherwise, he's smiling brightly at him with that shit eating grin. Like Steve's really a little kid heading off to school for the billionth time and his only worries are moronic bullies and girls with cooties.

Steve can only nod, the last of his worry ebbing away but he can't speak. His throat won't work. Tony wants Bucky here, despite what they made him do. Tony doesn't hate Bucky. He made Bucky something to keep him warm and protected in his sleep. A warm cocoon Bucky could trust and sleep in comfortably and would keep him safe from bullets, and explosions if the loud booming noises going off since breakfast were anything to go by.

Tony waited until the quinjet was far enough that they couldn't see him shaking and he ran for the door to the roof, into the elevator and out of the New York winter winds. Natasha didn't hesitate to sit next to him on the floor and hold him as he cried for so many reason he couldn't name them all. Clint had already snuck into the vents and was making them hot cocoa. He would have three mugs and probably a ridiculously large blue duvet on the couch. No one knew where he kept such a huge duvet or where he got it from, they just knew it was better than tranquilizers and Clint always brought it out and burritoed you before you could notice. They spent the entire afternoon in tangle of limbs and duvet on the ridiculously large couch. When Thor and Bruce came home, no one said a word or made any moves to explain or ask for anything.

With surprising grace and care, Thor wiggled in behind Tony and held the inventor's back to his chest becoming a solid, warm and grounding support for Tony and the two former SHIELD agents. Bruce made them all some warm honeyed milk with a shot of liquor and sidled up next to Natasha after passing around the warm drink and flicked on a quiet documentary about fluffy animals that no one would remember. They were all worried about how Steve's self assigned mission would treat the two men.

A few minutes into the documentary, Pepper came down with her face splotchy and red eyed. Clint folded back a portion of monstrously large duvet and Pepper hiccuped a breath before settling stretched across the team's laps, her head pillowed on Clint's lap while he ran his fingers through her messy hair. Tony held her hand under the duvet, grounding each other. Clint handed pepper a mug of Bruce's drink with a straw in it, it was the only one that held a hint of cinnamon.

Steve looked at Sam as he snored softly in the warm bullet proof cocoon and then at the unused sleeping bag rolled up and propped against a wall. They had been tailing Bucky for weeks only catching glimpses of him in the Ukraine. Just flashes of metal arm and a few locks of hair disappearing on the rooftop as they looked up from street level to where the shot had come from. They completely ignored the crumpled body of a man in his fifties on the ground like a discarded rag-doll. The only blood visible was seeping out of the bullet hole in the man's skull, the shot was clean and discrete. They moved north after receiving some intel from Natasha about the man, but all they found was the destroyed Hyrda base.

His phone chirped at him and Sam stirred, having slept his fill.

It was a text from Natasha, and Sam got up and stretched before jumping up and down a little to get his body to wake up and blood flowing. He sat on the sturdier of the crates and twisted the cap off of a bottle of juice they had gotten from a store.

"New lead?" Sam asked behind a yawn and took another swig of juice.

"Natasha has a friend that wants to meet with us."

"Where to Cap?" his friend said and Steve was smacked in the face with wonder as Sam simply started collapsing the bedroll into a cylinder. Sam wasn't leaving him. He was staying, hadn't once complained about anything other than Steve not getting enough sleep, during this whole miserable search in this cold damp hell.

"Finland."

* * *

AN: First Stucky fic, first Avengers fic I don't scrap and just force myself to post.

Sorry but Tony in this will be a walking head canon of mine at times. Yes, I think Tony would be everyone's goofy not so mature 40-50 year old dad who makes lame jokes and tries to be hip. He actually is but he's still goofy and lame. Even embarrassing but will beat the shit out of your horrible boyfriend and protect you and love you only like a dad can. Pepper will be Mom, the best mom, the mom that helps you plan revenge on the mean barbie doll wannabees in highschool.

Of course but Natasha is the leader of their misfit bunch of mischievous dorks. Yes, this fic will be heavily pregnant with headcanons. Link me your favorite Avenger's head canons in the comments or write your own and I'll see if i can get them in. Songs and playlists are more than welcome.

Mass cuddle session of comfort: couldn't resist. I have feeling they all have cuddle sessions but rarely a mass cuddle session. Pepper is there for reason you'll know about later.

Don't scoff at the OCs, they won't meddle much and I've been developing them since Avengers first came out. Maybe since the second Blade movie, even. Eleanor is especially old for an OC. It will make sense and she doesn't intrude much, TJ even less. No, he is not Bucky's kid and that was already his name before the Eleanor found him. They're just a manifestation of all us heartbroken losers who keep guard for Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes and pop a cap in the ass of whichever stupid ass dares interrupt.

Just give them a shot and go snuggle up in a huge duvet of headcanons, feels, and Stucky. Link me Stucky or Bucky Barnes playlist and leave me headcanons! PLEASE!


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